"The further a society drifts from the truth, the more it will hate those who speak it." Orwell

"Men are so simple of mind and so dominated by immediate needs that the deceitful man can easily find those ready to be deceived."
Machiavelli

"The demagogue is one who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots.." H.L. Mencken

Sunday, May 5, 2013

America The Shootiful

Here's another of my Sunday columns in our local newspaper. Given Wayne LaPierre's latest, I'm expecting a certain amount of pushback.

“Five dead in Federal Way Shooting.” “Man killed, woman
wounded in Maple Valley shooting.” “Man in serious condition after Burien
shooting.” “Three die in shooting at Auburn tavern.” “Two men wounded in West
Seattle shootings.” “Woman accused of fatally shooting man in Lynnwood.”
“Seattle parks worker pleads not guilty in shooting.” “Man in custody after
Spokane Valley shooting.” And this mind-blowing one: “Parking space a factor in
fatal Lakewood shooting.”
That’s but a partial list of recent local gun-related
headlines, and I excluded accidents. Nationally? Since the slaughter of those
kids in Connecticut, there’ve been around 4,000 deaths from firearms in the US.
And since 1968, there’ve been well over 1,300,000, which is more than in all US
wars combined.

I’ve already acknowledged that the barn door is way past
closing, that there’ll never be courageous new federal gun laws or even not-so
courageous ones. Lying about non-existent gun registries, and using Senate
rules, per usual, like a blunt object, Republicans (and four Democrats) recently
blocked a puny attempt to extend already-existing background checks to gun
shows and internet sales, despite support for the measure by ninety-percent of
Americans, including eighty-percent of gun owners. “The world’s greatest deliberative
body,” they call themselves.

A recent study showed that states with the most lax gun laws
have the highest rates of gun violence and suicide; so maybe I’ve been wrong in
saying that it wouldn’t matter anyway. If so, it might be the last time we hear
about it, because Congressional Republicans, breeding true, have also seen to
it that no more federal funds can be spent on such research.

Still, if only as an academic exercise, it’s worth pondering:
why, among civilized countries, are we the only one where shootings are so
commonplace? How is it that America, which has led the world in so many good
things, threatens to lead in gunplay, too; has evolved a culture in which
firearm ownership is as deeply embedded as breakfast? Why do so many Americans
feel the need to be armed to their gums? Our response to Sandy Hook: bulletproof
backpacks for school kids; calling for teachers to carry weapons, legislators
to wear bulletproof vests. Alone in the elsewhere not-so-wild West, our
politicians uninterested in or incapable of changing (like Australia’s did), the
U.S. is coming to look like Afghanistan. Murder by the daily dozen, siblings
killing siblings by accident: Hey, just the price of doing business. A fair
trade for staving off some imaginary government overreach.

How did we get from the belief by our founders that settlers
should have muskets, to where we are today, fearsome weapons sold like bananas,
to anyone, anywhere; where even minimal rules governing that corrosive commerce
are shouted down in paroxysms of paranoia? And don’t tell me the real problem
is video games or Hollywood movies, or mental health. In Japan, where video
games are as everywhere as sushi, where American movies play and their own are
just as brutal, people tend not to kill each other particularly much. Same with
the British, the French, even the Germans! And I bet they even have sociopaths.
Unarmed, elections happen there, oppression-free. No, there’s something that
makes America exceptional. Here, there’s pervasive right-wing mongering of and
buying into fear; and what’s curious is how mainstream it’s become. The cold-dead-hands,
they’re-coming-for-us crowd; the disinformed, Foxobeckian pretend patriots; the
believers that regulation presages confiscation. If they’re in the minority,
they seem to have all the power.

Good for that local homeowner and his .22, who held an
intruder at bay, and who, no doubt, would’ve passed a background check. What
worries me is the tailgating anger management reject reaching for his piece.
Because, increasingly, people are doing nasty, selfish things: tossing trash
out their windows, running red lights, refusing to yield, flashing fingers and
looking mad. Mad enough to kill over a parking space.

Coarseness and fury seem the rule nowadays. And these aren’t
criminals, they’re ordinary people; and the more ordinary such behavior
becomes, the more concerned I get. Because this is America, land of the
heavily-armed, land of fire, ready, aim; land of conspiracy theories and
omnipresent anger, especially among those who feel the need to take their
country back… from THOSE people, whoever they are. It’s not those unmarked tanks
rolling into town that’ll get us. It’s us. The aggrieved and seething, grabbing
a gun, getting even. It’s not about what’s legal: it’s about who we’ve become.

1 comment:

Thank you...for every single word. It's true. And I have to also believe it's true that good will prevail (taking the long view, perhaps.) I'm less naive about this than I used to be, but I cannot allow myself to believe otherwise. It would be too depressing and hopeless and I can't live that way. So, selfishly, I will work for change and live with optimism. And hug my granddaughter.

For The Sake of My Sanity

Some will know me from my other blog, "Surgeonsblog." Of late I've given over to frothing at the mouth as the world descends into stupidity, and our politics and our citizens seem, in numbers enough to be meaningful, unable to see it. So for now I'm leaving surgery writing behind, if for no other reason than to defuse and diffuse my unrelenting sense of doom, and with no expectation of making a difference. These are things that, to me, are obvious. Except that, apparently, they aren't.

RWS™

RWS™: For those who drop by here in the middle, and wonder what it means: it's my shorthand for Right Wing Screamers, which includes such a long list it's tiresome to type it. (I distinguish these blowhards from thoughtful conservatives, of whom I sort of take it on faith that there must still be some.) You know who I mean: Palin, Beck, O'Reilly, Limbaugh, Hannity, Coulter, Breitbart (RIP), Malkin, Savage, Levin, Ingraham, Doocey (more of a drooler than a screamer), Hewitt, Goldberg, Gingrich, Kristol, Scarborough (+/-), Bachmann, Inhofe, Bond, Broun, Boehner, Kelley, Santorum, Cain. To name but a few. Behold them in their unrepentant disregard for reality: the RWS™